Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Place names become fraught with meaning by association with people and events. The name “Wittenberg” calls to mind Luther and the Reformation for Protestants and Catholics alike. Geneva has a wider range of associations, but the Reformation Wall, with its four main statues of William Farel, John Calvin, Theodore Beza,…
“…a mystery without a solution, a horror story without savagery, a nightmare in which all the watches stop at noonday…” The Bestial Gardens of Men Then they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!” (Luke 23:30) The following lines by Edgar Allan Poe,…
2 Samuel 11-12, which record David’s sin with Bathsheba and its aftermath, is structured chiastically: This arrangement highlights several things about the episode. It reinforces what is obvious from even a casual reading, that the transition in the story occurs with Nathan’s confrontation of David’s sin and David’s confession. Up…
Medieval bestiaries are packed with quaintly inaccurate information about animals, birds, and other created things. Foxes and snakes are devilish critters; stags, pelicans and elephants are Christlike in their various ways. Of course, the medievals picked this up from the Bible, where bestiary observations are fairly common. “Go to the…
What do Reformational Catholicism and craft beer have in common? The question seems to beg for a punchline. Better yet, it would be pretty good clickbait for an article on Katharina von Bora’s “spirited” contribution that helped spark the Protestant Reformation. Well, this is no joke and I am certainly…
Suffering Defined Suffering happens. We witness it all around us and experience it in our lives. It often comes from forces beyond our control. Suffering is inscrutable; it strikes unexpectedly, on a bright summer day or a cold winter night. We lament and are bewildered by suffering. But we are…
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At the center of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches about three duties of Jewish piety – alms, prayer, and fasting. Regarding the last, He says, “when you fast, do not put on a gloomy face as the hypocrites, for they render their faces unrecognizable in order to be…
This Friday and Saturday, the Theopolis Institute will host the third annual Nevin Lecture series. The Nevin Lectures are an exercise in what Paul Murray calls “receptive ecumenism.” Each year, Theopolis invites a theologian, pastor, or thinker from outside our Protestant Reformed tradition to lecture about what divides us. We…
Revelation has several lists of social classes. The first is given when the Lamb opens the sixth seal and the world starts coming apart at the seams (6:12-17). There is another when the land beast imposes his mark on every class of society (13:16). The last comes after the Rider…
Esther is a dramatic story of God's rescue of the Jews, His clever inversion of Haman's plot, the courage of Esther. It is also an exodus story. Haman the Agagite is a Pharaoh who wants to wipe out all the Jews. Ahasuerus, fortunately, is an anti-Pharaoh who works to protect…
A number of people have raised objections of different sorts to my posts on Protestants and writing. In the nature of the case, I'm not going to resolve these issues with a blog post or two, and it would be passing tedious to answer every criticism of every critic. The…
In a 1962 article in JBL , Houston Smith traces the connections between Exodus and the gospel of John, focusing attention on the parallels between the plagues (signs and wonders) performed in Egypt and Jesus' signs. There are not only parallels between individual plagues and Jesus' signs but, Smith argues,…
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